Rate My Professor Leigh Searle

Dr Leigh Searle is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Otago's Wellington campus, within the Faculty of Medicine and Division of Health Sciences. She holds the qualifications MBChB, PGDipOMG, FRANZCOG, MRepMed, and CREI. Clinically, she practices as an Obstetrician and Gynaecologist at Wellington Hospital, where she supervises the training of registrars in obstetrics and gynaecology, and as a Fertility Specialist and Gynaecologist at Fertility Associates Wellington. She completed her subspecialty training in reproductive endocrinology and infertility in Wellington and at the Royal Women’s Hospital in Melbourne, focusing on fertility preservation for patients undergoing gonadotoxic treatments. Dr Searle teaches in undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in obstetrics and gynaecology.

Her research specializations include fertility preservation, factors affecting success rates of fertility treatments, and pregnancy outcomes after fertility treatment. Key publications feature “Preimplantation diagnosis and embryo selection in a patient with severe hereditary coproporphyria” (New Zealand Medical Journal, 2024, with G.A. Kristono and C. Towns), “A cannulated prolactin series reduces the need for further investigations in women with infertility and lowers the number of false positive screening prolactin measurements” (Australian & New Zealand Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology, 2021, with S. McDowell, R. Willink, and J. Krebs), a randomized trial “A randomized trial of endometrial scratching before in vitro fertilization” (New England Journal of Medicine, 2019, with S. Lensen et al.), the Cochrane review “Advanced sperm selection techniques for assisted reproduction” (2019, with S. Lepine et al.), and “LLETZ during lactation causing cervical stenosis and haematometra” (Australian & New Zealand Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology, 2018, with S. Scheck et al.). With over 300 citations on ResearchGate, her work impacts reproductive medicine. She is a Fellow of FRANZCOG and member of AGES and FSANZ.